Blame Calvin

We are, as a society, gluttons for punishment -- but what we should be are gluttons for pleasure. So says the CEO of French champagne giant Clicquot and author of a memoir-cum-cookbook "French Women Don't Get Fat." And perhaps, despite our desire to despise the French in everything (international relations, attitude, fries) Mireille Guiliano has a point. (A point that seems to resonate with, or irritate, most of the NY Times reading community: the article has been the "most e-mailed" for the past three days.)

It's a drag that this country was founded by Calvinists, who escaped religious persecution back home to live the ascetic life in America to which they aspired. Hard work put you at the front of the salvation line, and pleasure, in any form, was devil-inspired and shunned (which helps to explain the pain associated with British cuisine.) It's a philosophy that goes against the very essence of human nature: we crave the most what we cannot have. Remember Eve and the forbidden fruit? Exactly.

So when it comes to food, we diet and we binge, we whimper and we order Whoppers when no one is looking. What tastes good must be bad, so we gorge when we get our hands on it, reveling in the sin and transgression. Can't we just enjoy one piece of chocolate, confident that we deserve it, and perhaps even have walked a few blocks to achieve it? (Then we'd really deserve it.) From the article,

[Guiliano] says eating in America has become "controversial behavior'' and that our obsession with weight is growing into nothing less than a ''psychosis'' that she believes adds stress ''to our already stressful way of life,'' which is ''fast erasing the simple values of pleasure.''

Yes, we all have ten jobs and often have to eat on the run. And yes, there are not wonderful, poetic produce stalls on the street corners in, say, Detroit, as there are in Paris. But there is a wisdom in finding beauty, and peace, in simple pleasures. It's a thought that is not only healthy, but wise.